NASA’s critical “blue cloth training” for the moon mission Artemis 1 will not cover the earth as the industry originally intended.
It is a practice to wear wet clothes Artemisa 1the user a Funeral system (SLS) rocket to send the uncrewed Orion capsule on a mission around the moon. The trial is underway on Artemis 1’s key features prior to release, with the launch of the SLS.
The blue dress launched on April 1 on Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and is expected to be unveiled about 48 hours later. But there are many Technical problems have slowed jobswhich was canceled to host the April 8 announcement of the privacy Ax-1 missionary to the International Space Station from KSC’s Pad 39A.
Live updates: NASA’s moon mission Artemis 1
Select: NASA’s moon mission Artemis 1 is described in the photos
The Artemis 1 team planned to pick up the items again today (April 11), but they noticed a problem with the “helium check valve” in the Artemis 1 stack’s telephone booth. Helium is used to clean the fuel lines prior to loading and unloading, and the valve problem is involved in maintaining the desired pressure of the gas in the RL10 engine of the high -speed system. the SLS, NASA officials explained on the spot. memorial service at the end of last week (opens on new page).
The members of Artemis 1 decided to to continue the test on Tuesday (April 12), but in a changed way: They will no longer fire the high -level SLS, only filling the base base boxes.
Tanking will be held on Friday (April 14), along with start numbers and other important events. If all goes according to plan, everything will be set up at a scheduled “return time” of 2:40 pm EDT (1840 GMT), then the team will secure the original site and work. to other wind farms.
“I’m very confident we’ll have a good test on Friday with the revised procedures, and I think we’ll learn a lot,” said John Blevins, SLS chief engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center at Alabama, he said. on the phone with advertisers today.
Members of the Artemis 1 team do not have access to information about attacking high -altitude attackers, but they will gather additional information about SLS and Orion. And they’ve already met most of their blue clothes, thanks to work that was completed earlier this month, officials said in a phone call today.
And to see a bribe is not a terrible thing; Artemis 1 is the first flight for the SLS and the second only for the Orion, so some problems will be encountered during the prelaunch reviews, team members said.
“Learning is a piece; you can’t fly first without learning,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, director of Artemis with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems program at KSC, said in a call. today.
“So what are you going to do when something happens?” he added. “You look at the data, you develop a plan, you edit and release the data to take you to the next level.
It is not clear when that flight will come; NASA will not set an expected date for Artemis 1 until the blue fabric is gone and the final data is known. The missionary is unlikely to leave before June, however.
If Artemis 1 goes well, Artemis 2 will introduce astronauts around the moon in 2024. Artemis 3 is scheduled to land astronauts near the southern lunar pole in 2025 or 2026.
Mike Wall is the author of “Outside (opens on new page)“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; edited by Karl Tate), a book about exploring alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens on new page). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens on new page) or at Facebook (opens on new page).
